Seamstress, Cons Planned 'to Move on Together': DA

Day 9: NY cops still searching for escaped inmates
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jun 14, 2015 11:28 AM CDT
Seamstress, Cons Planned 'to Move on Together': DA
A law enforcement officer's weapon is muddied while searching two prisoners who escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility, Saturday, June 13, 2015, in Saranac, NY.   (Mike Groll)

Residents in rural New York unaccustomed to locking their doors were on edge as the manhunt for two killers who cut themselves free from a maximum-security prison stretched into a ninth day. More than 800 law enforcement officers in the search for David Sweat and Richard Matt scoured the fields and Adirondack woods several miles around the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, where the search continues to focus after the now-jailed tailor shop instructor Joyce Mitchell backed out of a plan to pick the men up after they cut themselves out of the prison and drive about seven hours to an unknown destination. "The three of them were going to move on together. That was the plan," DA Andrew Wylie told NBC. "One of the reasons that she didn't show up was because she did love her husband and didn't want to do this to him."

Mitchell, 51, was arraigned Friday on a felony charge of promoting prison contraband and a misdemeanor count of criminal facilitation. Roads on the western edge of Plattsburgh were open only to local traffic and a state police helicopter was parked in a field where 24 hours earlier a contingent of 40 officers had marched into the adjacent woods on yet another grid search. While many local residents remained locked in their homes, the outpouring of appreciation for the search effort continued. A restaurant urged people to tie blue ribbons around trees and mailboxes. "The locals have been awesome," said an officer from a neighboring county working 12-hour shifts. "They come around with food all the time. We've got too much to eat." But residents were very much on edge, with some keeping firearms handy just in case. (More prison break stories.)

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